NBC News has reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed Senate Bill 673 into law, thus making the erstwhile Golden State the first to create a missing child alert system specifically for black children.

According to NBC:

The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area. The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25.

Fantastic. But what about missing black people under 12 or over 25? Perhaps there needs to be a separate alert for each of those groups. Twenty-one to twenty-five-year-olds don’t seem like “youth” to me, yet those under 12 certainly are.

And what about, say, Asian-American folks between the ages of 6 and 17? Indigenous people between 4 and 21? Or non-binary mulatto agnostic Capricorns from 12 to 18 years of age? Surely they are an underappreciated and marginalized group that is probably also disproportionately represented amongst the ranks of the missing? Do Newsom and California not care about any of these groups?

Amber alerts or red alerts, whatever you want to call them, should be for everybody, whatever their race, gender, age, creed, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, or Zodiac sign.  That should be black and white, no?

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